the table with the ash-tray.
"Go!" roared the Grand Duke, beside himself with rage. "Go! Go! I'll have
you thrown out!"
The officers had come up to the Prince and were trying to calm him. The
Grand Duke looked apoplectic. His eyes were starting from his head, he
shouted to them to throw the rascal out. Christophe saw red. He longed to
thrust his fist in the Grand Duke's face; but he was crushed under a weight
of conflicting feelings: shame, fury, a remnant of shyness, of German
loyalty, traditional respect, habits of humility in the Prince's presence.
He tried to speak; he could not. He tried to move; he could not. He could
not see or hear. He suffered them to push him along and left the room.
He passed through the impassive servants who had come up to the door, and
had missed nothing of the quarrel. He had to go thirty yards to cross the
ante-chamber, and it seemed a lifetime. The corridor grew longer and longer
as he walked up it. He would never get out!... The light of day which
he saw shining downstairs through the glass door was his haven. He went
stumbling down the stairs. He forgot that he was bareheaded. The old usher
reminded him to take his hat. He had to gather all his forces to leave the
castle, cross the court, reach his home. His teeth were chattering when he
opened the door. His mother was terrified by his face and his trembling. He
avoided her and refused to answer her questions. He went up to his room,
shut himself in, and lay down. He was shaking so that he could not undress.
His breathing came in jerks and his whole body seemed shattered.... Oh! If
only he could see no more, feel no more, no longer have to bear with his
wretched body, no longer have to struggle against ignoble life, and fall,
fall, breathless, without thought, and no longer be anywhere!... With
frightful difficulty he tore off his clothes and left them on the ground,
and then flung himself into his bed and drew the coverings over him. There
was no sound in the room save that of the little iron bed rattling on the
tiled floor.
Louisa listened at the door. She knocked in vain. She called softly. There
was no reply. She waited, anxiously listening through the silence. Then she
went away. Once or twice during the day she came and listened, and again
at night, before she went to bed. Day passed, and the night. The house was
still. Christophe was shaking with fever. Every now and then he wept, and
in the night he got up several times and shook his fist at the wall. About
two o'clock, in an access of madness, he got up from his bed, sweating and
half naked. He wanted to go and kill the Grand Duke, He was devoured by
hate and shame. His body and his heart writhed in the fire of it. Nothing
of all the storm in him could be heard outside; not a word, not a sound.
With clenched teeth he fought it down and forced it back into himself.
* * * * *
Next morning he came down as usual. He was a wreck. He said nothing and his
mother dared not question him. She knew, from the gossip of the
neighborhood. All day he stayed sitting by the fire, silent, feverish, and
with bent head, like a little old man. And when he was alone he wept in
silence.
In the evening the editor of the socialist paper came to see him. Naturally
he had heard and wished to have details. Christophe was touched by his
coming, and interpreted it naïvely as a mark of sympathy and a desire for
forgiveness on the part of those who had compromised him. He made a point
of seeming to regret nothing and he let himself go and said everything that
was rankling in him. It was some solace for him to talk freely to a man
who shared his hatred of oppression. The other urged him on. He saw a good
chance for his journal in the event, and an opportunity for a scandalous
article, for which he expected Christophe to provide him with material if
he did not write it himself; for he thought that after such an explosion
the Court musician would put his very considerable political talents and
his no less considerable little tit-bits of secret information about the
Court at the service of "the cause." As he did not plume himself on his
subtlety he presented the thing rawly in the crudest light. Christophe
started. He declared that he would write nothing and said that any attack
on the Grand Duke that he might make would be interpreted as an act of
personal vengeance, and that he would be more reserved now that he was free
than when, not being free, he ran some risk in saying what he thought. The
journalist could not understand his scruples. He thought Christophe narrow
and clerical at heart, but he also decided that Christophe was afraid. He
said:
"Oh, well! Leave it to us. I will write it myself. You need not bother
about it."
Christophe begged him to say nothing, but he had no means of restraining
him. Besides, the journalist declared that the affair was not his concern
only: the insult touched the paper, which had the right to avenge itself.
There was nothing to be said to that. All that Christophe could do was to
ask him on his word of honor not to abuse certain of his confidences which
had been made to his friend and not to the journalist. The other made no
difficulty about that. Christophe was not reassured by it. He knew too well
how imprudent he had been. When he was left alone he turned over everything
that he had said, and shuddered. Without hesitating for a moment, he wrote
to the journalist imploring him once more not to repeat what he had
confided to him. (The poor wretch repeated it in part himself in the
letter.)
Next day, as he opened the paper with feverish haste, the first thing he
read was his story at great length on the front page. Everything that he
had said on the evening before was immeasurably enlarged, having suffered
that peculiar deformation which everything has to suffer in its passage
through the mind of a journalist. The article attacked the Grand Duke and
the Court with low invective. Certain details which it gave were too
personal to Christophe, too obviously known only to him, for the article
not to be attributed to him in its entirety.
Christophe was crushed by this fresh blow. As he read a cold sweat came out
on his face. When he had finished he was dumfounded. He wanted to rush to
the office of the paper, but his mother withheld him, not unreasonably
being fearful of his violence. He was afraid of it himself. He felt that if
he went there he would do something foolish; and he stayed--and did a very
foolish thing. He wrote an indignant letter to the journalist in which he
reproached him for his conduct in insulting terms, disclaimed the article,
and broke with the party. The disclaimer did not appear.
Christophe wrote again to the paper, demanding that his letter should be
published. They sent him a copy of his first letter, written on the night
of the interview and confirming it. They asked if they were to publish
that, too. He felt that he was in their hands. Thereupon he unfortunately
met the indiscreet interviewer in the street. He could not help telling
him of his contempt for him. Next day the paper, without a spark of shame,
published an insulting paragraph about the servants of the Court, who even
when they are dismissed remain servants and are incapable of being free. A
few allusions to recent events left no room for doubt that Christophe was
meant.
* * * * *
When it became evident to everybody that Christophe had no single support,
there suddenly cropped up a host of enemies whose existence he had never
suspected. All those whom he had offended, directly or indirectly, either
by personal criticism or by attacking their ideas and taste, now took the
offensive and avenged themselves with interest. The general public whom
Christophe had tried to shake out of their apathy were quite pleased to see
the insolent young man, who had presumed to reform opinion and disturb the
rest of people of property, taken down a peg. Christophe was in the water.
Everybody did their best to duck him.
They did not come down upon him all at once. One tried first, to spy out
the land. Christophe made no response, and he struck more lustily. Others
followed, and then the whole gang of them. Some joined in the sport
simply for fun, like puppies who think it funny to leave their mark in
inappropriate places. They were the flying squadron of incompetent
journalists, who, knowing nothing, try to hide their ignorance by belauding
the victors and belaboring the vanquished. Others brought the weight of
their principles and they shouted like deaf people. Nothing was left of
anything when they had passed. They were the critics--with the criticism
which kills.
Fortunately for Christophe, he did not read the papers. A few devoted
friends took care to send him the most insulting. But he left them in a
heap on his desk and never thought of opening them. It was only towards
the end of it that his eyes were attracted by a great red mark round an
article. He read that his _Lieder_ were like the roaring of a wild beast;
that his symphonies seemed to have come from a madhouse; that his art was
hysterical, his harmony spasmodic, as a change from the dryness of his
heart and the emptiness of his thought. The critic, who was well known,
ended with these words:
"Herr Krafft as a journalist has lately given astounding proof of his style
and taste, which roused irresistible merriment in musical circles. He was
then given the friendly advice rather to devote himself to composition. But
the latest products of his muse have shown that this advice, though
well-meant, was bad. Herr Krafft should certainly devote himself to
journalism."
After reading the article, which prevented Christophe working the whole
morning, naturally he began to look for the other hostile papers, and
became utterly demoralized. But Louisa, who had a mania for moving
everything lying about, by way of "tidying up," had already burned them. He
was irritated at first and then comforted, and he held out the last of the
papers to her, and said that she had better do the same with that.
Other rebuffs hurt him more. A quartette which he had sent in manuscript
to a well-known society at Frankfort was rejected unanimously and returned
without explanation. An overture which an orchestra at Cologne seemed
disposed to perform was returned after a month as unplayable. But the worst
of all was inflicted on him by an orchestral society in the town. The
_Kapellmeister_, H. Euphrat, its conductor, was quite a good musician, but
like many conductors, he had no curiosity of mind. He suffered (or rather
he carried to extremes) the laziness peculiar to his class, which consists
in going on and on investigating familiar works, while it shuns any really
new work like the plague. He was never tired of organizing Beethoven,
Mozart, or Schumann festivals: in conducting these works he had only to let
himself be carried along by the purring of the familiar rhythms. On the
other hand, contemporary music was intolerable to him. He dared not admit
it and pretended to be friendly towards young talent; in fact, whenever he
was brought a work built on the old lines--a sort of hotch-potch of works
that had been new fifty years before--he would receive it very well, and
would even produce it ostentatiously and force it upon the public. It
did not disturb either his effects or the way in which the public was
accustomed to be moved. On the other hand, he was filled with a mixture
of contempt and hatred for anything which threatened to disturb that
arrangement and put him to extra trouble. Contempt would predominate if the
innovator had no chance of emerging from obscurity. But if there were any
danger of his succeeding, then hatred would predominate--of course until
the moment when he had gained an established success.
Christophe was not yet in that position: far from it. And so he was much
surprised when he was informed, by indirect overtures, that Herr H. Euphrat
would be very glad to produce one of his compositions. It was all the more
unexpected as he knew that the _Kapellmeister_ was an intimate friend of
Brahms and others whom he had maltreated in his criticisms. Being honest
himself, he credited his adversaries with the same generous feelings which
he would have had himself. He supposed that now that he was down they
wished to show him that they were above petty spite. He was touched by it.
He wrote effusively to Herr Euphrat and sent him a symphonic poem. The
conductor replied through his secretary coldly but politely, acknowledging
the receipt of his work, and adding that, in accordance with the rules of
the society, the symphony would be given out to the orchestra immediately
and put to the test of a general rehearsal before it could be accepted for
public hearing. A rule is a rule. Christophe had to bow to it, though it
was a pure formality which served to weed out the lucubrations of amateurs
which were sometimes a nuisance.
A few weeks later Christophe was told that his composition was to be
rehearsed. On principle everything was done privately and even the author
was not permitted to be present at the rehearsal. But by a generally agreed
indulgence the author was always admitted; only he did not show himself.
Everybody knew it and everybody pretended not to know it. On the appointed
day one of his friends brought Christophe to the hall, where he sat at the
back of a box. He was surprised to see that at this private rehearsal the
hall--at least the ground floor seats--were almost all filled; a crowd of
dilettante idlers and critics moved about and chattered to each other. The
orchestra had to ignore their presence.
They began with the Brahms _Rhapsody_ for alto, chorus of male voices, and
orchestra on a fragment of the _Harzreise im Winter_ of Goethe. Christophe,
who detested the majestic sentimentality of the work, thought that perhaps
the "Brahmins" had introduced it politely to avenge themselves by forcing
him to hear a composition of which he had written irreverently. The idea
made him laugh, and his good humour increased when after the _Rhapsody_
there came two other productions by known musicians whom he had taken to
task; there seemed to be no doubt about their intentions. And while he
could not help making a face at it he thought that after all it was quite
fair tactics; and, failing the music, he appreciated the joke. It even
amused him to applaud ironically with the audience, which made manifest its
enthusiasm for Brahms and his like.
At last it came to Christophe's symphony. He saw from the way the orchestra
and the people in the hall were looking at his box that they were aware of
his presence. He hid himself. He waited with the catch at his heart which
every musician feels at the moment when the conductor's wand is raised and
the waters of the music gather in silence before bursting their dam. He
had never yet heard his work played. How would the creatures of his dreams
live? How would their voices sound? He felt their roaring within him; and
he leaned over the abyss of sounds waiting fearfully for what should come
forth.
What did come forth was a nameless thing, a shapeless hotch-potch. Instead
of the bold columns which were to support the front of the building the
chords came crumbling down like a building in ruins; there was nothing to
be seen but the dust of mortar. For a moment Christophe was not quite sure
whether they were really playing his work. He cast back for the train, the
rhythm of his thoughts; he could not recognize it; it went on babbling
and hiccoughing like a drunken man clinging close to the wall, and he was
overcome with shame, as though he had himself been seen in that condition.
It was of no avail to think that he had not written such stuff; when an
idiotic interpreter destroys a man's thoughts he has always a moment of
doubt when he asks himself in consternation if he is himself responsible
for it. The audience never asks such a question; the audience believes in
the interpreter, in the singers, in the orchestra whom they are accustomed
to hear as they believe in their newspaper; they cannot make a mistake; if
they say absurd things, it is the absurdity of the author. This audience
was the less inclined to doubt because it liked to believe. Christophe
tried to persuade himself that the _Kapellmeister_ was aware of the hash
and would stop the orchestra and begin again. The instruments were not
playing together. The horn had missed his beat and had come in a bar too
late; he went on for a few minutes, and then stopped quietly to clean his
instrument. Certain passages for the oboe had absolutely disappeared.
It was impossible for the most skilled ear to pick up the thread of
the musical idea, or even to imagine that there was one. Fantastic
instrumentations, humoristic sallies became grotesque through the
coarseness of the execution. It was lamentably stupid, the work of an
idiot, of a joker who knew nothing of music. Christophe tore his hair. He
tried to interrupt, but the friend who was with him held him back, assuring
him that the _Herr Kapellmeister_ must surely see the faults of the
execution and would put everything right--that Christophe must not show
himself and that if he made any remark it would have a very bad effect. He
made Christophe sit at the very back of the box. Christophe obeyed, but he
beat his head with his fists; and every fresh monstrosity drew from him a
groan of indignation and misery.
"The wretches! The wretches!..."
He groaned, and squeezed his hands tight to keep himself from crying out.
Now mingled with the wrong notes there came up to him the muttering of the
audience, who were beginning to be restless. At first it was only a tremor;
but soon Christophe was left without a doubt; they were laughing. The
musicians of the orchestra had given the signal; some of them did not
conceal their hilarity. The audience, certain then that the music was
laughable, rocked with laughter. This merriment became general; it
increased at the return of a very rhythmical motif which the double-basses
accentuated in a burlesque fashion. Only the _Kapellmeister_ went on
through the uproar imperturbably beating time.
At last they reached the end (the best things come to an end). It was the
turn of the audience. They exploded with delight, an explosion which lasted
for several minutes. Some hissed; others applauded ironically; the wittiest
of all shouted "Encore!" A bass voice coming from a stage box began to
imitate the grotesque motif. Other jokers followed suit and imitated it
also. Some one shouted "Author!" It was long since these witty folk had
been so highly entertained.
When the tumult was calmed down a little the _Kapellmeister_, standing
quite impassive with his face turned towards the audience though he
was pretending not to see it--(the audience was still supposed to be
non-existent)--made a sign to the audience that he was about to speak.
There was a cry of "Ssh," and silence. He waited a moment longer;
then--(his voice was curt, cold, and cutting):
"Gentlemen," he said, "I should certainly not have let _that_ he played
through to the end if I had not wished to make an example of the gentleman
who has dared to write offensively of the great Brahms."
That was all; and jumping down from his stand he went out amid cheers from
the delighted audience. They tried to recall him; the applause went on for
a few minutes longer. But he did not return. The orchestra went away. The
audience decided to go too. The concert was over.
It had been a good day.
Christophe had gone already. Hardly had he seen the wretched conductor
leave his desk when he had rushed from the box; he plunged down the stairs
from the first floor to meet him and slap his face. His friend who had
brought him followed and tried to hold him back, but Christophe brushed him
aside and almost threw him downstairs;--(he had reason to believe that the
fellow was concerned in the trick which had been played him). Fortunately
for H. Euphrat and himself the door leading to the stage was shut; and his
furious knocking could not make them open it. However the audience was
beginning to leave the hall. Christophe could not stay there. He fled.
He was in an indescribable condition. He walked blindly, waving his arms,
rolling his eyes, talking aloud like a madman; he suppressed his cries
of indignation and rage. The street was almost empty. The concert hall
had been built the year before in a new neighborhood a little way out of
the town; and Christophe instinctively fled towards the country across
the empty fields in which were a few lonely shanties and scaffoldings
surrounded by fences. His thoughts were murderous; he could have killed the
man who had put such an affront upon him. Alas! and when he had killed him
would there he any change in the animosity of those people whose insulting
laughter was still ringing in his ears? They were too many; he could do
nothing against them; they were all agreed--they who were divided about so
many things--to insult and crush him. It was past understanding; there was
hatred in them. What had he done to them all? There were beautiful things
in him, things to do good and make the heart big; he had tried to say them,
to make others enjoy them; he thought they would be happy like himself.
Even if they did not like them they should he grateful to him for his
intentions; they could, if need be, show him kindly where he had been
wrong; but that they should take such a malignant joy in insulting and
odiously travestying his ideas, in trampling them underfoot, and killing
him by ridicule, how was it possible? In his excitement he exaggerated
their hatred; he thought it much more serious than such mediocre people
could ever be. He sobbed: "What have I done to them?" He choked, he thought
that all was lost, just as he did when he was a child coming into contact
for the first time with human wickedness.
And when he looked about him he suddenly saw that he had reached the edge
of the mill-race, at the very spot where a few years before his father had
been drowned. And at once he thought of drowning himself too. He was just
at the point of making the plunge.
But as he leaned over the steep bank, fascinated by the calm clean aspect
of the water, a tiny bird in a tree by his side began to sing--to sing
madly. He held his breath to listen. The water murmured. The ripening corn
moaned as it waved under the soft caressing wind; the poplars shivered.
Behind the hedge on the road, out of sight, bees in hives in a garden
filled the air with their scented music. From the other side of the stream
a cow was chewing the cud and gazing with soft eyes. A little fair-haired
girl was sitting on a wall, with a light basket on her shoulders, like a
little angel with wings, and she was dreaming, and swinging her bare legs
and humming aimlessly. Far away in a meadow a white dog was leaping and
running in wide circles. Christophe leaned against a tree and listened and
watched the earth in Spring; he was caught up by the peace and joy of these
creatures; he could forget, he could forget. Suddenly he clasped the tree
with his arms and leaned his cheek against it. He threw himself on the
ground; he buried his face in the grass; he laughed nervously, happily.
All the beauty, the grace, the charm of life wrapped him round, imbued his
soul, and he sucked them up like a sponge. He thought:
"Why are you so beautiful, and they--men--so ugly?"
No matter! He loved it, he loved it, he felt that he would always love it,
and that nothing could ever take it from him. He held the earth to his
breast. He held life to his breast:
"I love you! You are mine. They cannot take you from me. Let them do what
they will! Let them make me suffer!... Suffering also is life!"
Christophe began bravely to work again. He refused to have anything more
to do with "men of letters"--well named--makers of phrases, the sterile
babblers, journalists, critics, the exploiters and traffickers of art. As
for musicians he would waste no more time in battling with their prejudices
and jealousy. They did not want him? Very well! He did not want them.
He had his work to do; he would do it. The Court had given him back his
liberty; he was grateful for it. He was grateful to the people for their
hostility; he could work in peace.